House Cassel is a minor northern house in the long service of the Starks of Winterfell. They hold no seat of their own; their place is in the great keep itself, where Cassels have stood at the right hand of the wolf for generations beyond count. Their borrowed arms — wolves' heads upon a grey field within a black border — mark them out as a household that has chosen, over and over again, to die with its lords rather than apart from them.
In the years before Robert's Rebellion, Ser Martyn Cassel rode south with Lord Eddard Stark to the Tower of Joy and did not return; only six men came back from that grim errand. His son Jory grew up in Winterfell under the eye of his uncle, Ser Rodrik Cassel, the bluff white-whiskered master-at-arms who drilled three generations of Stark children at sword and shield. At the opening of A Game of Thrones, Ser Rodrik commands the garrison while Jory rides south as captain of Lord Eddard's household guard — the line, as ever, divided between hall and road in the service of the same grey banner.